1.55 Americans

Both military historians and the United States military have long had an unhealthy fascination with the German Army of World War II. The Wehrmacht, the thinking goes, was both enormously effective (much more so than their enemies), and apolitical.[1] Unstained by its lack of involvement in Nazi war crimes, the Wehrmacht was thus a useful military model. Add to that the start of the Cold War, in which the Soviets became the main enemy, and the American military looked to the Germans for information and inspiration. The apotheosis of this was Colonel Trevor Dupuy’s Quantified Judgment Model, which used a statistical analysis to conclude that Germans were more effective soldiers than Americans in World War II. The German’s Combat Effectiveness Value, according to Dupuy, was significantly higher than that of the Allies, western and eastern front alike. Each German soldier, Dupuy figured, was worth about 1.55 Americans.[2]

The result of this fascination has come out in a number of ways, including the Marine Scout Snipers who decided that the SS symbol was a good one to adopt as their logo. But it also made the American Army focused on the kind of mechanized warfare that they took as the German model. Facing the Soviets across the Fulda Gap during World War II, American soldiers found themselves symbolically in the same position as the Germans in WWII (excepting the whole Germans invading the USSR thing, of course). That focus was (arguably) useful in Western Europe, but less so in other theaters, like Southeast Asia. The Germans were notoriously bad at counterinsurgency, and some of the American difficulties, I think, came over from the German model (note that pre-WWII, Americans had been pretty reasonable at counter-insurgency). The fascination with the Germans might also have influenced American imperial behavior; alone (I think) among major imperial powers, the United States did not have a separate imperial military force (like the Indian Army) that it used abroad.

The US military has gotten away from that obsession somewhat in recent years, and adapted quite well to the requirements of counterinsurgency (though it shows signs of backtracking in recent years), but, as the Marines demonstrated, the fascination with Nazi Germany remains.

[1] Military historians have pushed back against the apolitical image of the Wehrmacht in recent decades.
[2] Dupuy explained his model concisely here (subscription required, sorry). There were substantial problems with the analysis, outlined here and here. Dupuy recognized some of these problems, including a chapter called “Fudge Factors” in his book on the topic, Numbers, Predictions, and War.

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28 comments

Is not the Marine Corps (State Dept. Troops) a separate imperial army for use abroad? To my knowledge they have never been used inside the US. They have seen combat in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

In my admittedly amateur, but recent, reading, your footnote 1 seems to me to understate the case. Richard Evans and Anthony Beevor, among others, are stating flatly that the Wehrmacht was involved in atrocities previously attributed only to the SS.

And again – the Marines in question were admiring the SS, not the Wehrmacht. I think admiring the Wehrmacht is bad enough, but they were admiring the SS. Not to perseverate, or anything.

Military historians have pushed back against the apolitical image of the Wehrmacht in recent decades.

And even to the extent that the Wehrmacht was apolitical, it’s worth noting that its lack of interference in political matters was bought and paid for with bribes. Not exactly the ideal of noble detachment that its admirers would prefer.

I am pretty sure that the Marine Corps was referred to in the 1920s as State Dept. Troops due to their intervention in Latin America. But, maybe I am remembering wrong. They do seem to have been the instrument of choice for foreign military intervention in that region during the early 20th century. I was unaware they had seen combat in 1812 or the Civil War. It is certainly downplayed compared to their foreign exploits.

J. Otto., you are not remembering wrong. From the Small Wars Manual (1940). , “In small wars, diplomacy has not ceased to function and State Department exercises a constant and controlling interest over military operations.” … “The military leader in such operations thus finds himself limited to certain lines of actions as to the strategy and even as to the tactics of the campaign. This feature‟s been so marked in past operations that Marines have been referred to as State Department troops.”

I find the Marine-SS exposure disturbing. It was a serious breakdown in command. Or worse, no breakdown at all. I’m inclined to think the root of the problem is the inadvisability of an all-volunteer armed forces.

I am pretty sure that the Marine Corps was referred to in the 1920s as State Dept. Troops due to their intervention in Latin America

Ah! You are correct. Sorry, I misinterpreted what you were saying.

And again – the Marines in question were admiring the SS, not the Wehrmacht. I think admiring the Wehrmacht is bad enough, but they were admiring the SS.

To make it even more complicated, there was the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the SS which fought alongside the Wehrmacht (under the tactical command of the OKW, but not officially part of the Wehrmacht), and the SS itself. But, yes, I think I understated matters.

And they have certainly been used inside the United States, including during the Civil War and the War of 1812.

And at Harper’s Ferry, under the command of Robert E. Lee! (which is odd, because you’d have thought it would be a Marine officer. Maybe there wasn’t one handy. Maybe they were all too Republican or too drunk.)

The Germans were notoriously bad at counterinsurgency, and some of the American difficulties, I think, came over from the German model

Good points generally, but I think this one is a bit of a stretch. I’ve never seen it suggested that a) there was a particular “German way of COIN”, b) that the Americans copied it or c) that it was the reason they didn’t do well in Vietnam. The general view is that the MACV approach was to try refighting Korea, with a small sprinkling of the Malay States Emergency.

Also, d: were the Germans really notoriously bad at COIN? Resistance in a lot of the occupied territories was pretty well irrelevant to the course of the war. There weren’t vast numbers of German divisions held down by COIN duties in France, say, and therefore unavailable for the Eastern Front. France was where they went for a rest.

ajay, my sense of the German way of COIN is that there really wasn’t one, and if there was, it was done using extremely brutal methods (kill one of ours and we’ll kill thousands of yours). The areas I’m thinking of in WWII were particularly the Balkans, where hundreds of thousands of German and allied troops fought an ineffective war against the partisans, and the conquered territories of the USSR, where the horrendous German treatment of conquered peoples created thriving partisan groups, which caused some problems for the Germans.

In terms of the Americans copying it, my sense is more that they copied aspects of the German approach to war, which included a general disdain for counterinsurgency and especially population-centric COIN, and that hampered the US in post-WWII COIN efforts. I’m not sure anybody’s actually looked at that, so I freely admit it’s my own interpretation and probably needs a book-length study (or several) to discuss it.

OK, that makes sense. Though I think any such study could find it difficult to distinguish between two possible explanations:
your suggestion that the Americans copied the German disdain for COIN and so didn’t do very well at it post-WW2;
and the alternative possibility that, post-WW2, the US army was just heavily influenced by its own experiences in WW2 and tended to look at all subsequent conflicts as though they were the same. Abrams and Westmoreland ended up in command because they’d done well fighting against the Germans in WW2. Makes sense that they’d think that the things that had worked for them in 1944 – and for which they had been decorated and promoted – were the right things to do. It’s not so much that they were copying the Germans; they were copying their younger selves.

ajay, What’s interesting though, is that what Abrams and Westmoreland did was not imitative of their younger selves. Just to take one example, the Abrams tank (and it’s canceled predecessor the MBT-70) in conception looked nothing like the Sherman tank of WWII. The Sherman’s virtues were reliability, simplicity, and the ease of mass production. It was–with a couple of exceptions–resolutely lower-technology. The Abrams by contrast was highly complicated, very technological, difficult to mass-produce, and (at first) not terribly reliable. It resembled much more closely the German tanks of WWII like the Panther and the Tiger.

I was talking more generally, but even then it applies. The idea that, during and coming out of Vietnam, what the Army needs is a highly complicated and enormous main battle tank is fascinating. Westmoreland was Chief of Staff of the Army from 68 to 72, when the MBT-70 was being worked on intensively. Abrams was COS during the time that the MBT-70 was canceled and efforts shifted to what became his eponymous tank.

So Westy wasn’t COS when MBT-70 got under way, and Abrams was actually COS when it was cancelled? That doesn’t exactly point to them being key supporters of the project.

I don’t think you need to hypothesise that Abrams et al were trying to emulate the Germans to explain why professional armour officers wanted better tanks, though. That’s just what tankers do. Especially when their main focus is a very large potentially enemy army with ten thousand tanks.

And the US in WW2 wasn’t avoiding projects that were “highly complicated, very technological, difficult to mass-produce, and (at first) not terribly reliable” – how about the B-29?

But I don’t want to get sidetracked into tankery. The point I was trying to make is that Abrams and Westmoreland rose through the ranks during a very large conventional war, and so, when they found themselves in VN, they decided to treat it as though it were a rather smaller conventional war. (Same was true of a lot of more junior commanders.)

I don’t think you need to posit that they were emulating the Germans to explain that either. In any case, that’s not really what the Germans did in the occupied territories. They actually had a COIN policy – albeit an evil and murderous one – involving extensive use of local troops and militia, especially local national minorities, and widespread use of collective punishment and massacres against local populations. That’s not much like what MACV did; local SVN troops were ignored and sidelined, and collective punishment and massacre were not part of official policy (though sadly not unknown).

The German Army was in general the best infantry force of the war – that seems to be widely conceded – but I am suspicious of this notion that the Waffen-SS were particularly good fighters. Fanatical, sure, but better soldiers?

The Marines’ Nazi-worship is leading them astray, and I am frankly a little astonished that putting a SS logo on one’s flag or weapon isn’t grounds for discipline.

I am suspicious of this notion that the Waffen-SS were particularly good fighters. Fanatical, sure, but better soldiers?

They were generally better-equipped; their divisions IIRC tended to get rather better treated when it came to replacements and upgrades. They were ahead of the Army in the queue, as it were.
And ISTR that they also got to handpick their recruits – so they’d at least be in better physical shape.

So Westy wasn’t COS when MBT-70 got under way, and Abrams was actually COS when it was cancelled? That doesn’t exactly point to them being key supporters of the project.

MBT-70 was cancelled by Congress after the Germans pulled out, over the Army’s strong protests. The Abrams was supposed to be the simpler version which, when it became the new MBT, was promptly made high technology by the Army.

The point I was trying to make is that Abrams and Westmoreland rose through the ranks during a very large conventional war, and so, when they found themselves in VN, they decided to treat it as though it were a rather smaller conventional war

But they didn’t treat it the same way; they treated it the way the Germans treated it, with much more of an emphasis on high technology than on mass numbers. That was substantially different that in WWII.

But they didn’t treat it the same way; they treated it the way the Germans treated it, with much more of an emphasis on high technology than on mass numbers

Ah, OK, I get you. I think we’ve been talking at cross purposes – you’re talking about the whole army, I was talking specifically about VN. So you’re suggesting that the whole army had changed from being a conscripts-with-Garands-and-Shermans force in 1945 to a gee-whiz hi-tech computerised army in 1965, and that a lot of the reason for this change was a desire to emulate the Germans? That makes more sense. Definitely yes on part one, and it would, as you say, be very interesting to explore part 2.

I’d like, in that case, to propose an alternative; the US Army wasn’t trying to emulate its former temporary enemy the Wehrmacht, but its current and permanent enemies, the US Navy and the US Air Force, both of which had gone terrifically hi-tech since 1945, and both of which were angling to take over the role of national defence from the army, thanks to the H-bomb, which would just need the Army to walk in afterwards and rake over the cinders.

Especially when their main focus is a very large potentially enemy army with ten thousand tanks.

77,000 west of the Urals in 1990, IIRC.

From the journal of Hans Roth, a 32-year old private in the 299th infantry division on 26 June 1941, incidentally[1]:-

‘Meanwhile, a few few comrades have pulled the remaining Rotarmisten and Jews from their hiding places. A solo gun performance echoed across the square and with that, the mob ascended to the heavens of the “English High Church”.’

[1]Recently published (in a bloody awful translation) as Eastern Inferno, which incidentally provide a rather handy corrective view as to how Barbarossa was experienced by the 90% of the Werhmacht not in a panzer division. Not exactly overwhelming with literary merit, but as Hans disappeared in Operation Bagration, they have the advantage of not having been self-censored post 1945.

Robert E. Lee was the senior military officer available in to command Federal troops at Harpers Ferry. The Marine detachment was commanded by a marine lieutenant. James Buchanan was the President, he was a Democrat.

Ajay, I’d agree that the reaction of the Army was driven at least partly by rivalry with the USAF and the Navy, but not the form of the reaction. The Navy had been similarly high-tech at the turn of the century (steel steamships!) and the Army reform of the first decade had not made the force a resolutely high-tech one in imitation.

I think that, without quantifying it, the Germans were better at tactics and operations than anyone else. The casualty rations, even in 1944, point that way. But. as has been pointed out, they were bad at logistics, bad at the higher levels of strategy, and often criminal in conduct. BTW, the way so many 50s and 60s military commentators accept the myth of the “apolitical” German army is testimony to their appalling naivety. The German army was always a political force. EG, in vetting officers for Social Democrat tendencies, encouraging soldiers to vote for right parties, intriguing under the Kaiser, during Weimar and under the Nazis, selling out the regime to protect the high command in 1918, fostering the “stab in the back” legend… I could go on. That the myth has not dies yet is amazing.

What is interesting is if you look at the force structure during the Cold War, generally a third of the active force divisions were what amounted to leg infantry, yet it was rare that a general officer made it to CSA coming from anything other than then armor/mech/cav or the airborne – both of which, I’d argue, had a robust and US-focused doctrine throughout the Cold War that was based on the undeniable reality of beating the Wehrmacht in the ETO and the IJA in the PTO during WW II through combined arms ashore and air/sea power afloat and overhead.

For the post-Weyand group, who did not see action in WW II, the common experiences were Korea and/or Vietnam – again, not much to learn from the Wehrmacht in those conflicts. Rogers first saw action in Korea as an infantry officer, I believe, and he was followed by Meyer (Korea – infantry), Wickham (infantry-airborne/Korea), Vuono (artillery – Vietnam); Sullivan (tanker); Shinseki (tanker); Schoomaker (tanker/special forces); Casey (tanker/mech infantry), Dempsey (tanker); Odierno (artillery)…

I’d argue the most significant influences on the Army in the Cold War era were all the WWII vets who had fought and won against the Germans, actually, who knew they would be fighting in a mechanized and NBC battlefield in Europe if the balloon ever went up, but also saw the reality of post-colonial conflict in the developing world…people like Collins, Ridgway, Gavin, Howze, Abrams, Depuy, and Starry, who had fought (whether actuallly or metaphorically) from Bastogne to Key West to Chosin to the Ia Drang to Fulda to Fort Irwin…

All the schwerpunkt rhetoric aside, the vast majority of CSA, VCSA, and CG TRADOC from 1970-2000 were either A) a tanker/cavalryman/mech infantry officer (who mostly all came out of Fort Knox, which lived and breathed GSP-style mechanized combined arms throughout the Cold War) or an airborne/air cavalry/special forces type, who mostly came out of Fort Benning, where the influence of Ridgway, Gavin, and Howze were paramount.

Very few artillerymen or leg infantry (outside of the airmobile/air assault types) got to the top three spots during the Cold War. The last real “leg” infantryman I can think of (outside of the airborne) was John Wickham, and before him was Shy Meyer (by way of the air cav); Carl Vuono was an artilleryman, and I can’t think of an engineer…much less an aviator.

The Marines are different, since the point of the organization is leg infantry, but I’d expect you have to look hard to find anyone in the Cold War corps who looked much beyond Shepherd and Shoup as thinkers.

As far as colonial armies go, the Philippine Scouts and Philippine (Commonwealth) Army in the interwar years is about as close as it ever got; during the Cold War, MAAGs and MilGrps with the locals (Greeks, Filipinos, ROKs, ARVNs, etc.) were the equivalent.

And if you are really looking for the source of norse runes in unofficial unit insignia in this day and age, I’d offer that the KISS army probably has had as much to do with it as Hitler’s army…is it stupid? Certainly. Is it evidence of “fascination”? Doubtful…